Developing Custom Alexa Skills

Since my background is in Microsoft Development, I have spent a fair bit of time playing in the Azure World. One of the offerings in Azure is the Azure Storage Account which comes with a basic Queuing mechanism. I have used Storage Account Queues on a previous project, and thought it would be a perfect fit for an Alexa Skill I had been working on. The code…

Even after writing software for 30 years, it still amazes me how much time I waste on small little issues that crop up out of the blue. However, what may be even more fascinating is that after I discover what the issue is, it always turns out to be something that I did wrong. Just once I wish it was a mistake that someone else had made. Case…

About a 2 years ago I purchased a Surface Pro 4 machine, and by far it has been the finest computer I have ever owned...until 2 weeks ago. I had read on the Internet about the Surface Pro 4 having screen issues, specifically jittery, shaking screen display issues. There was so much uproar about this issue that Microsoft eventually decided to replace any machine that was…

I come from a background of coding in the Microsoft World, and as a result, I have been spoiled by the development and debugging support that are given by Visual Studio. Throughout the years Visual Studio has evolved into one of the better environments for creating code.Write code, test and debug all without having to leave the environment or deploy. Everything is done locally until you…

Senario You are creating an Angular 2+ Application that uses Login With Amazon (LWA) So that you can test locally, you are using ngrok and have setup an ngrok https address as the return URL at LWA When Amazon sends you back to your application after a successful login, , you get an “Invalid Host Header” error. Why? The reason for the error is that most development-oriented…

If you are hosting an Angular 2+ application in an Azure Web App you may see the following error when you force the browser to refresh a page or when you try and hit a URL directly..."The resource you are looking for has been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable."This only shows up when the site is hosted in Azure, local development works…

The Alexa Developers Twitch Channel is the place to go if you are looking for in-depth instruction on creating Custom Alexa Skills Here is an Index of the Video Series that are available The Joy of Voice Alexa Evangelist Jeff Blankenberg presents a multi-part series on creating an Alexa Custom Skill that features Start Wars information. Episode # 1 - https://www.twitch.tv/videos/250659801 Episode # 2 - https://www.twitch.tv/videos/253903878 Episode #…

There are a variety of resources available to assist developers with creating Custom Alexa Skills. Here are the ones that I recommend that you check out if you are interested in Alexa Skill Development GitHub The Official GitHub Repository for Alexa. Filled with Samples and Information https://github.com/alexa/ Twitter The Official Amazon Alexa Blog - https://twitter.com/alexadevs?lang=en Many Alexa Evangelists have Twitter Accounts that they update regularly. Here is…

If you are interested in developing your own Alexa Skills, there are basically 3 routes you can take. Simplest Complexity - Alexa Blueprints Recently, Amazon introduced a series of no-code, fill-in-blank templates called Alexa Blueprints that let anyone build Alexa Skills, specifically for their personal Amazon Devices. Now the average (non-programmer) person has the ability to create basic Alexa Skills. There are currently 20 skill blueprints in…